Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 2:

In page 4, lines 23 and 24, to delete “, or such other percentage as may be prescribed,”.

Amendments Nos. 2 and 3 concern large-scale residential developments, LRDs. The Bill is the replacement for the strategic housing development, SHD, legislation and requires that not less than 70% of any large-scale development should be either homes or student accommodation, or homes and student accommodation. It then provides a get-out clause, which suggests it could be any other percentage that may be prescribed. We are seeking to delete that because there should not be any wriggle room in the need to provide the accommodation that is desperately needed to address the accommodation crisis, the housing crisis and the student accommodation crisis.

We have many other concerns regarding the legislation's ability to address the failures of the SHD model, and we will discuss those later. In this regard, we want to make sure there is no wriggle room in the proportion of the development that has to deliver accommodation.

For the floor space that is not used for housing, which may be necessary in a large-scale development, what goes into that floor space should be dictated through a proper consultation with the local community and what it feels is needed in that space that is not being provided or used for accommodation. It should not just come down to what the developer might wish to put in there, with a focus on how it can maximise its profits. If we are building large-scale housing developments, we want to make sure the services that will be provided as part of those developments will be beneficial to the community and will be what the community wants. The community should determine those things. That is the point of these two amendments.

See this speech in context